living etching of the proverb, without color, but sharply outlined. He
had a large fortune; he had a good intellect; he had no
vices--sufficient reasons, the world said, why he had become, at forty,
unendurably conceited. His life, the world considered, was but a
succession of conquests: and the quiet manner with which he entered a
drawing-room crowded with people, or stood apart and looked on, was but
another indication of that vanity of his which never faltered, even in
the presence of the most beautiful women or the most brilliant men. The
world had no patience with him. If he had not gone out in society at
all, if he had belonged to that large class of men who persistently
refuse to attire themselves in dress-coats and struggle through the
dance, the world would have understood it; but, on the contrary, Stephen
went everywhere, looking smaller and plainer than usual in his
evening-dress, asked everybody to dance, and fulfilled every social
obligation with painstaking exactitude. The world had no patience with
him; he was like a golden apple hanging low; but nobody could pull him
off the branch.
Stephen's conversation-friend (every unmarried man, though an
octogenarian, has his conversation-friend) was Adelaide Kellinger, the
widow of his cousin and favorite boyhood-companion, Ralph Kellinger.
Adelaide was now thirty-five years of age, an agreeable woman, tall,
slender, and exquisitely dressed--a woman who made people forget that an
arm should be round, or a cheek red, when her slim, amber-colored
gracefulness was present with them. Adelaide's house was Stephen's one
lounging-place. Here he came to hear her talk over last evening's party,
and here he delivered fewer of those concise apropos remarks for which
he was celebrated, and which had been the despair of a long series of
young ladies in turn; for what can you do with a man who, on every
occasion, even the most unexpected, has calmly ready for you a neat
sentence, politely delivered, like the charmingly folded small parcels
which the suave dry-goods clerk hands to you across the counter? Stephen
was never in a hurry to bring out these remarks of his; on the contrary,
he always left every pause unbroken for a perceptible half moment or
two, as if waiting for some one else to speak. The unwary, therefore,
were often entrapped into the idea that he was slow or unprepared; and
the unwary made a mistake, as the more observing among them soon
discovered.
Adelaide Kellinger had studied her cousin for years. The result of her
studies was as follows: She paid, outwardly, no especial attention to
him, and she remained perfectly natural herself. This last was a
difficult task. If he asked a question, she answered with the plainest
truth she could imagine; if he asked an opinion, she gave the one she
would have given to her most intimate woman-friend (if she had had one);
if she was tired, she did not conceal it; if she was out of temper, she
said disagreeable, sharp-edged things. She was, therefore, perfectly
natural? On the contrary, she was extremely unnatural. A charming woman
does not go around at the present day in a state of nature mentally any
more than physically; politeness has become a necessary clothing to her.
Adelaide Kellinger never spoke to her cousin without a little preceding
pause, during which she thought over what she was going to say; and, as
Stephen was slow to speak also, their conversations were ineffective,
judged from a dramatic point of view. But Adelaide judged by certain
broad facts, and left drama to others. Stephen liked to be with her; and
he was a creature of habit. She intended that he should continue to like
to be with her; and she relied upon that habit.
* * * * *
Afar off, counting by civilization, not by parallels of latitude, there
are mountains in this country of ours, east of the Mississippi, as
purple-black, wild, and pathless, some of them, as the peaks of the
Western sierras. These mountains are in the middle South. A few roads
climb from the plain below into their presence, and cautiously follow
the small rivers that act as guides--a few roads, no more. Here and
there are villages, or rather farm-centers, for the soil is fertile
wherever it is cleared; but the farms are old and stationary: they do
not grow, stretch out a fence here, or a new field there; they remain as
they were when the farmers' sons were armed and sent to swell George
Washington's little army. To this day the farmers' wives spin and weave,
and dye and fashion, with their own hands, each in her own house, the
garments worn by all the family; to this day they have seen nothing move
by steam. The locomotive waits beyond the peaks; the water-mill is the
highest idea of force. Half a mile from the village of Ellerby stands
one of these water-mills; to it come farmers and farmers' boys on
horseback, from miles around, with grist to be ground. And sometimes the
women come too, riding slowly on old, pacing cart-horses, their faces
hidden in the tubes of deep, long sun-bonnets, their arms moving up and
down, up and down, as the old horse stretches his head to his fore-feet
and back with every step. When two farm-women meet at the mill-block
there is much talking in the chipped-off mountain dialect; but they sit
on their horses without dismounting, strong, erect, and not uncomely,
with eyes like eagles', yet often toothless in their prime, in the
strange rural-American way, which makes one wonder what it was in the
life of the negro slaves which gives their grandchildren now such an
advantage in this over the descendants alike of the whites of
Massachusetts Bay and the plantations of the Carolinas. When the farmers
meet at the mill-block, they dismount and sit down in a row, not exactly
on their heels, but nearly so: in reality, they sit, or squat, on their
feet, nothing of them touching the ground save the soles of their heavy
shoes, the two tails of their blue homespun coats being brought round
and held in front. In this position they whittle and play with their
whips, or eat the giant apples of the mountains. Large, iron-framed men,
they talk but slowly; they are content apparently to go without those
finer comprehensions and appreciations which other men covet; they are
content to be almost as inarticulate as their horses--honest beasts,
with few differences save temper and color of hide. Across the road from
the mill, but within sound and sight of its wheel, is Ellerby Library.
It is a small wooden building, elevated about five feet above the
ground, on four corner supports, like a table standing on four legs.
Daylight shines underneath; and Northern boys, accustomed to close
foundations, would be seized with temptations to run under and knock on
the floor: the mountain boys who come to the mill, however, are too well
acquainted with the peculiarities of the library to find amusement in
them; and, besides, this barefooted cavalry cherishes, under its
homespun jacket, an awkward respect for the librarian.
This librarian is Honor Dooris, and it is to her Stephen Wainwright now
presents his sheets of manuscript.
"You think I have an odd handwriting?" he said.
"Yes," answered the librarian; "I should not think you would be proud of
it."
"I am not."
"Then why not try to change it? I might lend you my old copies--those I
used myself and still use. Here they are." And she took from her desk a
number of small slips of paper, on which were written, in a round hand
with many flourishes and deeply-shaded lines, moral sentences, such as
"He that would thrive must rise at five"; "Never put off till to-morrow
what you can do to-day"; and others of like hilarious nature.
"Thanks," said Stephen; "I will take the copies, and try--to improve."
The librarian then began to look through the abstract, and Stephen did
not break the silence.
"Would it not be a good idea for me to read it aloud?" she said, after a
while. "I can always remember what I have read aloud."
"As you please," replied Stephen.
So the librarian began, in a sweet voice, with a strong Southern accent,
and read aloud, with frowning forehead and evidently but
half-comprehension, the chemical abstract which Stephen had prepared.
"It is very hard," she said, looking up at him, with a deep furrow
between her eyebrows.
"But not too hard for a person of determined mind."
The person of determined mind answered to the spur immediately, bent
forward over the desk again, and went on reading. Stephen, motionless,
sat with his eyes fixed on a spider's web high up in the window. When,
too deeply puzzled to go on, the girl stopped and asked a question, he
answered it generally without removing his eyes from the web. When once
or twice she pushed the manuscript away and leaned back in her chair,
impotent and irritated, he took the sheets from her hand, explained the
hard parts with clear precision, gave them back, and motioned to her to
continue. She read on for half an hour. When she finished, there was a
flush on her cheeks, the flush of annoyance and fatigue.
"I must go now," she said, placing the manuscript in her desk, and
taking down her broad-brimmed Leghorn hat, yellow as old corn, adorned
with a plain band of white ribbon.
"You are not, of course, foiled by a little chemistry," said Wainwright,
rising also, and looking at her without change of expression.
"Oh, no," she answered; but still she crossed the room and opened the
door, as if rather glad to escape, and, with a parting salutation, left
him.
Wainwright sat down again. He did not watch her through the window; he
took up a late volume of Herbert Spencer, opened it at the mark, and
began reading with that careful dwelling upon each word which is,
singularly enough, common alike to the scientific and the illiterate.
The mass of middle-class readers do not notice words at all, but take
only the general sense.
Honor went down the road toward Ellerby village, which was within sight
around the corner, walking at first rapidly, but soon falling into the
unhurrying gait of the Southern woman, so full of natural, swaying
grace. At the edge of the village she turned and took a path which led
into a ravine. The path followed a brook, and began to go up hill
gradually; the ravine grew narrow and the sides high. Where the flanks
met and formed the main hillside, there was, down in the hollow, a house
with a basement above ground, with neither paint without nor within. No
fences were required for Colonel Eliot's domain--the three near
hillsides were his natural walls, a ditch and plank at the entrance of
the ravine his moat and drawbridge. The hillsides had been cleared, and
the high corn waved steeply all around and above him as he stood in
front of his house. It went up to meet the sky, and was very good corn
indeed--what he could save of it. A large portion, however, was
regularly stolen by his own farm-hands--according to the pleasant
methods of Southern agriculture after the war. The Colonel was glad when
he could safely house one half of it. He was a cripple, having lost a
leg at Antietam. He had married a second wife, and had a house
overflowing with children. He was poor as a squirrel, having a nest in
these woods and the corn for nuts, and little else besides. He was as
brave as a lion, courteous as an old cavalier, hot-headed when aroused,
but generally easy-tempered and cheery. He went to church every Sunday,
got down on his one knee and confessed his sins honestly; then he came
home in the old red wagon, sat on the piazza, and watched the corn grow.
Honor was his niece, she shared in his love and his poverty like his own
children. Mrs. Eliot, a dimpled, soft-cheeked, faded woman, did not
quite like Honor's office of librarian, even if it did add two hundred
dollars to their slender income: none of Honor's family, none of her
family, had ever been librarians.
"But we are so poor now," said Honor.
"None the less ladies, I hope, my dear," said the elder woman, tapping
her niece's shoulder with her pink-tipped, taper fingers.
Honor's hands, however, showed traces of work. She had hated to see them
grow coarse, and had cried over them; and then she had gone to church,
flung herself down upon her knees, offered up her vanity and her
roughened palms as a sacrifice, and, coming home, had insisted upon
washing out all the iron pots and saucepans, although old Chloe stood
ready to do that work with tears in her eyes over her young mistress's
obstinacy. It was when this zeal of Honor's was burning brightest, and
her self-mortifications were at their height--which means that she was
eighteen, imaginative, and shut up in a box--that an outlet was suddenly
presented to her. The old library at Ellerby Mill was resuscitated,
reopened, endowed with new life, new books, and a new floor, and the
position of librarian offered to her.
In former days the South had a literary taste of its own unlike anything
at the North. It was a careful and correct taste, founded principally
upon old English authors; and it would have delighted the soul of
Charles Lamb, who, being constantly told that he should be more modern,
should write for posterity, gathered his unappreciated manuscripts to
his breast, and declared that henceforth he would write only for
antiquity. Nothing more unmodern than the old-time literary culture of
the South could well be imagined; it delighted in old editions of old
authors; it fondly turned their pages, and quoted their choice passages;
it built little libraries here and there, like the one at Ellerby Mill,
and loaded their shelves with fine old works. In the cities it expanded
into associations, and large, lofty chambers were filled to the ceiling
with costly tomes, which now look so dark, and rich, and ancient to
Northern visitors, accustomed to the lightly bound, cheap new books
constantly succeeding each other on the shelves of Northern libraries.
These Southern collections were not for the multitude; there was no
multitude. Where plantations met, where there was a neighborhood, there
grew up the little country library. No one was in a hurry; the rules
were lenient; the library was but a part of the easy, luxurious way of
living which belonged to the planters. The books were generally
imported, an English rather than a New York imprint being preferred;
and, without doubt, they selected the classics of the world. But they
stopped, generally, at the end of the last century, often at a date
still earlier; they forgot that there may be new classics.
The library at Ellerby Mill was built by low-country planters who came
up to the mountains during the warm months, having rambling old
country-houses there. They had their little summer church, St. Mark's in
the Wilderness, and they looked down upon the mountain-people, who,
plain folk themselves, revered the old names borne by their summer
visitors, names known in their State annals since the earliest times.
The mountain-people had been so long accustomed to see their judges,
governors, representatives, and senators chosen from certain families,
that these offices seemed to them to belong by inheritance to those
families; certainly the farmers never disputed the right. For the
mountain-people were farmers, not planters; their slaves were few. They
were a class by themselves, a connecting link between the North and the
South. The old names, then, placed Ellerby Library where it stood full
thirty years before Honor was born. They did not care for the village,
but erected the small building at a point about equidistant from their
country-houses, and near the mill for safety, that boys or idle slaves,
drawn by the charm which any building, even an empty shed, possesses in
a thinly settled country, might not congregate there on Sundays and
holidays, or camp there at night. But the library had been closed now
for thirteen years; the trustees were all dead, the books moldy, the
very door-key was lost. The low-country planters no longer came up to
the mountains; there were new names in the State annals, and the
mountain-farmers, poorer than before, and much bewildered as to the
state of the world, but unchanged in their lack of the questioning
capacity, rode by to and from the mill, and gave no thought to the
little building with its barred shutters standing in the grove. What was
there inside? Nothing save books, things of no practical value, and
worthless. So the library stood desolate, like an unused lighthouse on
the shore; and the books turned blue-green and damp at their leisure.
II.
Stephen Wainwright traveled, on principle. He had been, on principle,
through Europe more than once, and through portions of Asia and Africa;
in the intervals he made pilgrimages through his own country. He was not
a languid traveler; he had no affectations; but his own marked
impersonality traveled with him, and he was always the most indistinct,
unremembered person on every railroad-car or steamboat. He was the man
without a shadow. Of course, this was only when he chose to step out of
the lime-light which his wealth threw around his every gesture. But he
chose to step out of it very often, and always suffered when he did. He
was for ever adding up different opinions to find the same constantly
recurring sum total of "no consequence." After each experience of the
kind he went back into lime-light, and played at kingship for a while.
He had been doing this for twenty years.
One day he came to Ellerby on the top of the stage. Nine Methodist
ministers in the inside, returning from a missionary meeting, had made
the lonely road over the mountains echo with their hearty hymns. One
small brother climbed out at the half-way station on the summit, and,
after drinking copiously from the spring, clasped his hands behind him
and admired the prospect. Wainwright looked at him, not cynically, but
with his usual expressionless gaze. The little minister drank again, and
walked up and down. After a few moments he drank a third time, and
continued to admire the prospect. Wainwright recalled vaguely the
Biblical injunction, "Take a little wine for thy stomach's sake," when,
behold! the small minister drank a fourth time hastily, and then, as the
driver gathered up the reins, a last and hearty fifth time, before
climbing up to the top, where Wainwright sat alone.
"I am somewhat subject to vertigo," he explained, as he took his seat;
"I will ride the rest of the way in the open air, with your permission,
sir."
Wainwright looked at him. "Perhaps he was weighting himself down with
water," he thought.
The brother had, indeed, very little else to make weight with: his small
body was enveloped in a long linen duster, his head was crowned with a
tall hat; he might have weighed one hundred pounds. He could not brace
himself when they came to rough places, because his feet did not reach
the floor; but he held on manfully with both hands, and begged his
companion's pardon for sliding against him so often.
"I am not greatly accustomed to the stage," he said; "I generally travel
on horseback."
"Is there much zeal in your district?" said Wainwright. It was the
question he always asked when he was placed next to a clergyman, varying
it only by "parish," "diocese," or "circuit," according to appearances.
"Zeal," said his companion--"zeal, sir? Why, there isn't anything else!"
"I am glad to hear it," replied Wainwright.
The little minister took the remark in good faith.
"A believer?" he asked.
"Certainly," replied Stephen.
"Let me shake you by the hand, brother. This is a noble country in which
to believe. Among these great and solemn peaks, who can disbelieve or
who go contrary to the will of the Lord?"
Stephen made no answer, and the brother, lifting up his voice after a
silence, cried again, "Who?" And, after a moment's pause, and more
fervently, a second "Who?" Then a third, in a high, chanting key. It
seemed as if he would go on for ever.
"Well," said Stephen, "if you will have answer, I suppose I might say
the moonlight whisky-makers."
The little brother came down from the heights immediately, and glanced
at his companion. "Acquainted with the country, sir?" he asked in a
business-like tone.
"Not at all," said Stephen.
"Going to stay at Ellerby awhile, perhaps?"
"Perhaps."
"Reckon you will like to ride about; you will need horses. They will
cheat you in the village; better apply to me. Head is my name--Bethuel
Head; everybody knows me." Then he shut his eyes and began to sing a
hymn of eight or ten verses, the brethren below, hearing him chanting
alone on the top, joining in the refrain with hearty good will. As soon
as he had finished, he said again, in a whisper, "Better apply to me,"
at the same time giving his companion a touch with the elbow. Then he
leaned over and began a slanting conversation with the brother who
occupied the window-seat on his side; but, whenever he righted himself
for a moment, he either poked Wainwright or winked at him, not lightly
or jocularly, but with a certain anxious, concealed earnestness which
was evidently real. "Head is my name," he whispered again; "better write
it down--Bethuel Head." And when Wainwright, who generally did
imperturbably whatever other people asked him to do, finding it in the
end the least trouble, finally did write it down, the little man seemed
relieved. "Their blood has dyed the pure mountain-streams," he whispered
solemnly, as the coach crept down a dark gorge with the tree-branches
sweeping its sides; "but I shall go out, yea, I shall go out as did
David against Goliath, and save one man--one!"
"Do," said Stephen. What the little brother meant he neither knew nor
cared to know; going through life without questions he had found to be
the easiest way. Besides, he was very tired. He had never "rejoiced in
his strength," even when he was young; he had always had just enough to
carry him through, with nothing over. The seven hours on the
mountain-road, which climbed straight up on one side of the Blue Ridge,
and straight down on the other, now over solid rock, now deep in red
clay, now plunging through a break-neck gorge, now crossing a rushing
stream so often that the route seemed to be principally by water, had
driven him into the dull lethargy which was the worst ailment he knew;
for even his illnesses were moderate. He fell asleep mentally, and only
woke at the sound of a girl's voice.
It was twilight, and the stage had stopped at Ellerby Mill. Two of the
ministers alighted there, to take horse and go over solitary roads
homeward to small mountain-villages, one ten, one fifteen miles away.
Brother Bethuel was leaning over the side, holding on to his tall hat,
and talking down to a young girl who stood at the edge of the roadway on
a bank of ferns.
"Masters is better, Miss Honor," he said, "or was the last time I saw
him; I do not think there is any present danger."
"I am very glad," answered the girl with earnestness; her eyes did not
swerve from the little minister's face, although Wainwright was now
looking down too. "If we could only have him entirely well again!"
"He will be!--he will be!" answered Brother Bethuel. "Pray for him, my
sister."
"I do pray," said the girl--"daily, almost hourly." Into her dark eyes,
uplifted and close to him, Wainwright could look directly, himself
unnoticed as usual; and he read there that she did pray. "She believes
it," he thought. He looked at her generally; she did not appear to be
either extremely young, or ignorant, or commonplace, exactly. "About
eighteen," he thought.
"He has asked if his father has been told," continued the minister.
"No, no; it is better he should know nothing," said the girl. "Can you
take a package, Mr. Head?"
"Yes, to-morrow. I abide to-night with Brother Beetle."
"I will have it ready, then," said the girl.